News and Notes from National Center for Family & Marriage Research

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From: National Center for Family & Marriage Research <ncfmr@bgsu.edu>
Date: Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 9:50 AM
Subject: News and Notes
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News and Notes

August 2011

Welcome

The National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR), established in 2007 at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), welcomes you to News and Notes, our monthly electronic newsletter. News and Notes aims to keep you informed about the activities of the NCFMR. We will also announce funding and research opportunities, provide registration details for conferences and workshops, and keep you updated on current research findings.

What's New at the NCFMR...

ASA Honors Co-Directors Brown and Manning with the Inaugural Article of the Year Award

American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of the Family

NCFMR Co-Directors Susan L. Brown (right) and Wendy D. Manning were awarded for the best journal article published in the past three years during the American Sociological Association's (ASA) 106th Annual Meeting on August 21. Brown and Manning received the inaugural award for their publication "Family Boundary Ambiguity and the Measurement of Family Structure: The Significance of Cohabitation" published in Demography. Their research examines family boundary ambiguity in adolescent and mother reports of family structure using data from the first wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

More than 5,000 people attended this year's annual meeting and award's program Social Conflict: Multiple Dimensions and Arenas in Las Vegas. Brown and Manning accepted the award at the ASA Section on Sociology of the Family reception. Congratulations to Susan and Wendy on receiving this prestigious first-time award!

View NCFMR Data Resources products using Add Health data.

Married and Cohabiting Couples

Pilot Data Released for Public Use

Data from the Married and Cohabiting Couples pilot data projects are now available for public use via the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The data are composed of a nationally representative sample of United States married (752) and cohabiting (323) couples 18-64 years of age. Both members of the couple provided information on a range of topics including union history, work and family stress, marital disillusionment, and health-care preferences.

Research teams from around the country presented their preliminary findings on August 4 at Bowling Green State University and will submit working papers to the NCFMR Working Paper Series. Additionally, team members will present their findings at future national conferences and workshops.

View the NCFMR Pilot Data Projects and Data Resources webpage, and Quick Download the data projects from the I CPSR website.

View Graduate Research Assistant Sarah Burgoyne's NCFMR Married and Cohabiting Couples conference poster.

View The Data Source Married and Cohabiting Couples.

New Students Join the NCFMR

The NCFMR welcomes the following new and returning students:

New Students

Katie Kusner, Graduate Research Fellow
Emily Padgett, Graduate Research Fellow
Nicole Shoenberger, Graduate Research Assistant

Returning Students

Julia Arroyo, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Larry Gibbs, Graduate Research Assistant
Bart Stykes, Graduate Research Assistant
Britani Williams, Project Assistant
Erin Ziegelmeyer, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Graduate research fellows are pursuing dissertation research on topics consistent with the Center's research themes under the direction of a BGSU Faculty Research Affiliate. Graduate research assistants help the NCFMR staff build NCFMR's Data Resources, while undergraduate students and project research assistants, working under the close supervision of staff members, assist with the production of data resources.

The following updates may be viewed on the NCFMR website.

Newly Released Data Resources

Original Data

Original data sponsored and coordinated by the NCFMR.

Married and Cohabiting Couples Pilot Data

The Data Source

Descriptions of newly released data sets of interest to family researchers.

Married and Cohabiting Couples Pilot Data

Family Profiles

Original reports summarizing the latest statistics on U.S. families.

NCFMR Graduate Research Assistant Examines Couples' Relationship Satisfaction Using New Pilot Data

A new data set, Married and Cohabiting Couples, collected by the NCFMR in 2010 and recently released to the public through ICPSR, allows for couple-level assessments of spouse/partner agreement about relationship quality. Research generated by NCFMR Graduate Research Assistant Sarah Burgoyne shows married and cohabiting couples are similarly likely to agree in their reports of relationship satisfaction. However, married couples are more likely to both report they are very satisfied with their marriage (57% of married versus 36% of cohabiting couples), whereas cohabiting couples are especially likely to both report that they are not very satisfied (37% of cohabiting versus 19% of married couples). Similar proportions of married (24%) and cohabiting (27%) couples provide discordant reports about the quality of their relationship.

Couple Relationship Quality by Union Type

Source: National Center for Family & Marriage Research Pilot Data 2010: Married and Cohabiting Couples. Couples were asked, "Taking all things together, how satisfied are you with your relationship with your spouse or partner?" Response categories ranged from very dissatisfied to very satisfied. The sample includes 724 married couples and 316 cohabiting couples.